West High School on lockdown (Photo credit: Garna Mejia KSL)
SALT LAKE CITY — It was a scary scene at West High School Wednesday afternoon. The school was placed on lockdown, albeit brief, because of a juvenile in possession of a handgun.
According to the Salt Lake City Police Department, the individual dropped the weapon sometime in the morning, but it wasn’t until around 12:45 when they first received a report from the school.
Thankfully, the process was quick and without altercation.
“We located that individual a short time later in the school and took them into custody and we did locate a handgun on their person at that time,” says Detective Michael Ruff, with the Salt Lake City Police Department.
No shots were fired, no one was injured, and police say that both students and faculty did a good job of following proper procedure.
Due to the quick identification and arrest of the suspect, the lockdown was lifted around 15 minutes later.
“There was never any altercation or anything like that as far as we’re aware,” he explains. “It was just an alert person who saw this individual drop a weapon and pick it back up, was the information we were originally given.”
Officers are still uncertain whether or not the suspect is a West High School student.
“We’re still kind of doing some investigation to figure out what that entailed, in terms of whether they were a student there or not,” explains Ruff.
He adds that cases like this are extremely dangerous, making it paramount for the public to stay aware and call-in any suspicious activity.
“We would hope that they would immediately either call us or notify the school so we can take that action very quickly,” he says. “In this case we were very fortunate that we were able to find this individual and no one was injured.”
West High School has a student body of around 3,000 students.